E-commerce, online bill payments, and other forms of card-not-present payments continued their strong growth last year to capture a bigger share of total card payments, according to newly released Federal Reserve data. The number of what the Fed calls remote payments using general-purpose payment cards grew 22.8% in 2017 from …
Read More »Click2Gov Payment Application for Municipalities Cited in 47 Data Breaches
Click2Gov, a software application popular among municipalities for processing online payments of utility bills and fees, has been compromised in 46 U.S. cities and one Canadian location, according to an analysis released this week by Gemini Advisory. The New York City-based data-security firm estimates 294,929 payment card records have been …
Read More »Square Resumes Its Pursuit of a Bank Charter
After a lull of more than five months, merchant processor Square Inc. is resuming its attempt to obtain a bank charter. A spokesperson for San Francisco-based Square confirmed Wednesday morning that the company would refile its application the same day. Square in September 2017 filed for an industrial-bank charter from …
Read More »Active Role for Fed in Real-Time Payments Gets Support from Big Companies and Small Banks
Big banks generally aren’t too thrilled about the Federal Reserve taking a direct operational role in a U.S. real-time payment system, but smaller banks and credit unions as well as some big companies support the idea. The Fed’s two-month comment period on its proposed Real Time Gross Settlement service closed …
Read More »Eye on Security: Oversight of Payment Software To Change Under PCI Council Plan; EMVCo Updates 3-D Secure
Oversight of payment-processing software will change under detailed plans announced by the PCI Security Standards Council. In related news, the EMVCo standards body announced an update to its 3-D Secure standard for protecting card-not-present transactions. In a Friday blog post, the PCI Council said its pending PCI Secure Software Standard …
Read More »Financial Institutions Can Expect To Pay Millions More Fighting Account-Application Fraud: Report
Banks and credit unions will face an uphill battle fighting account-application fraud in the next few years, according to a new report from Aite Group LLC. Boston-based Aite projects that financial institutions will spend $781 million in 2022 on services for thwarting credit card application fraud, up 40% from $557 …
Read More »P2P Dominates Banks’ Mobile Apps in Payments, but Other Functions Lag
All but two of 27 bank mobile apps examined in a new S&P Global Inc. study offer person-to-person payments and another bank will soon add the feature to its app. But less than a third of the apps support cardless ATM transactions. The study by New York City-based S&P Global’s …
Read More »Deloitte: Look for Faster Payments on the B2B Side in 2019, And More Contactless Transactions
The prognostications for 2019 are starting to roll in, and if at least one comes true, we’ll see business-to-business transactions driving the growth of faster-payment systems. And smart phones might actually gain some discernible traction at the point of sale. The predictions come from the big accounting and consulting firm …
Read More »New Report Shows the Massive Scale of Bot Attacks
Large companies are getting bombarded by approximately 530 bot attacks per day, and the vast majority of more than 200 firms surveyed have at least one person on their security teams devoted solely to bot defense, according to Osterman Research Inc. Osterman, a Black Diamond, Wash.-based research firm that works …
Read More »Government Releases Report on Campus Prepaid Card and Deposit-Account Fees
A report from the U.S. Department of Education shows that fees college students pay for campus-sponsored prepaid cards and deposit accounts can vary widely. The report was prepared by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for the Education Department and completed in February, but not released until Friday. The release came …
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